Stanley Kubrick's space odyssey

 

watchmen

 

Job rotation: vital

 

writing on a Samsung s7 plus and books and csr and bad books

Bought a Samsung tablet S7 plus to avoid the double work of writing a post and then typing it on the keyboard. The initial experience has been good. I am liking the Way the pen responds to my writing.

I have not written a lot in the past few months. It is not that I was waiting for the tab. The reason is that I have been reading a lot. I have finished one book by Jeremy clarkson. He is definitely a Very delightful writer. I loved the flow with Which he writes. I loved the conviction and also the confusion he experiences when he is Writing.

A perfect book is difficult to write and the perfect book is boring. so shouldnt perfect books be written? Well a perfect book does not happen in ore sitting or or in one single Version/ multiple versions. It will only approach towards perfectness. I firmly believe that many books across the world have not been published since the authors were aiming for perfection. Does this justify a half baked book. What is a half baked book. The very first example of a bad book is taking something from folklore & pasting it Verbatim with the plagiarized authors name stamped on it. This is the worst book. The author (Plagiarizer) Should be hanged.
 

Where a bookstore has such books in the front row, we know books are dying and the readers/ buyers are already dead. There are plenty of authors who are the visible face of CSR of big companies. These authors piublish books that utilize the funds of CSR. while the purpose of CSR is to bring the talented in the social circle within the vicinity of the company. OMG, I drifted again.

I have now re-started reading books in my mother tongue, also. One of the best comic Writers in my mother tongue is beechi I consider him as kannada's P. G.wodehouse. People have recorded many of his one liners. In the present contest, he was asked in a program to explain how to become a good writer. Beechi told that the precursor to become a good writer is to first become a good reader. He adviced the individual to read profusely, understand the nuances of how a reader feels & then start writing

It is akin to Engineering drawing, wherein, the person drawing is not the intended audience. The reader of the drawing might be thousands of kilometers away, but, the drawing is a universal language & it has the Same meaning everywhere.

Top Gun: Maverick A perfect movie experience since a long time

Of late, it has become a practice to watch back all the classics, which had impressed me on my movie watching journey. This has been supported by the junk which has been delivered to theaters by team Hollywood. 

There was no film that got me excited. Few did, but they fizzled out. For eg, I waited for the sequel to sincity, it backfired, like, I had to come back from the theater and re-watch the original since I did not want this experience to damp my original experience. Some sequels which still got my interest going are the John wick movies. I totally like them. It is like Keanu Reeves has now reached that point of his life and is doing what he was born for. 

 However, this writing is about Top Gun: Maverick. So let us dig in. This was my most anticipated film. Me being in an aviation industry definitely adds on to the expectations. I had loved the original. Once I watched the trailer and its making, I was totally hooked. Expectations as usual, for a sequel are generally high and boy, did it keep it up. The movie is fantastic. It is like a victory to the film industry called Hollywood. It is a victory to the experience Tom cruise brings to the table. 

This is one film which is so loyal to the original film that you will mistake it for the original if you excused the age of tom cruise. I liked how much the film digs into the original, but still not overdoing it. It is not used to increase the mileage of the present film. Maverick stands on its own, but like standing on the shoulder of the original. The action is breathtaking. The cameras, the performance of the actors are top notch. The background score blends well. The conversations are well written.

The premise of contradictions are well brought out, without not blowing anything out of proportions. Every emotion is spot on and the time it is enacted is not dragged. It brought back my movie watching experience. If you call it a formula for movie watching, then I am ready to accept that. But then, all Hollywood movies are supposed to be planned on the same lines. But fail pathetically. The amount of groundwork undertaken to make the movie is evident. Putting the audience right in the cockpit, on the wings, on the cockpit, fantastic. The feeling was exhilarating. It is commercial movie making at its best. 

This is old school movie making at its best. Watch it, in, theaters.

Rambo: First blood, Should have ended all wars

To talk about this movie, is to start from the end. Because, that is where it "starts" to dawn on the viewer what exactly, the whole presentation is about. The breakdown sequence is one of the best I have viewed in movies. Stallone understood the gravity of that scene so well and has given it his all. The reaction of the senior to the outburst is most mature and soothing. The viewer is made to understand both sides of the situation. The viewer feels for both the characters and what they represent. It is such a beautiful depiction of the ill effects of war and we still in 2022, are fighting wars. It is one of the few movies, wherein the "Hero" feels a common man. It is also a movie where all the actions in the 99% of the movie, is justified by the 1% of "that" scene.

 The thing is, the Rambos are understanding that wars are passe. However, people giving "orders" want to continue to do so. That last scene, the outburst is the summary of any soldier fighting wars. It is a summary for all the "civilians" who don't participate in war but are either for or against it, vocally. It all boils down to jingoism being fed into the minds of people which makes theme either for or against it. Similar to religion where, you are for a particular religion or against it. It is difficult to understand how one civilized country can get into another civilized country and start proclaiming ownership. It is not going to happen in 2022. In 2022 nobody wins wars. In 2022 anybody can go to war. But, there will be no winners. However, there will be continuous losers throughout the existence of the nations. 

2022 and further will all be consensus through dialogue. I hope forwards from 2022, nations stop investing in military equipment/technology. There are ample examples of how investment in military has provided technical boons to all humans. What if, instead of investing in military, the same is invested directly into goods for all mankind. Every nation spends much of their money towards military equipment. This business is ensured by business marketing "ill will" between nations. These businesses will first invest in creating "them an we". Once a sale is done, does it stop. No. A subsidiary of the same business will sell countering military equipment to the other nation on a different brand name. See, it is again "We and them".

If Charlie Chaplin's splendid speech in the Great dictator is a classic and at a very higher intellectual level. I would rate the breakdown scene in Rambo 1 as common man's rendition of the same idea. Wars, don't win anything. There are always losses, to both sides. Killing people in the name of war has a legitimacy attached to it. It is dubbed "moral". The same killings by a "disturbed person" is dubbed "crime". In fact, the information brigade has made "war crime" morally acceptable to people in the name of national security. I fail to understand how we have transformed to accepting killing people in the name of war, acceptable and be proud of losses to the nation we belong.

Abstraction, root of all evil

     The word abstraction conjures up so much complexities that many people do not want to use it in their vocabulary. This was particularly highlighted recently when a write-up was made to my superior. The written content was then edited over a long time to ensure that the remains of this word does not exist. So much pain was taken to ensure this. It was assumed that somehow the next reader would know that this word was used in the first draft. The resultant content was so much watered down that I could not stand near that content even for a micro second. Now, what happened here? What happened was that my writing was further abstracted without the superior understanding it. He did not reduce the abstraction but increased it. This is the un-becoming of many of the organizations today. 

     This applies particularly to traditional organizations who have made it to the present age based on the money amassed during their prime. Organizations should facilitate whistle blowing and suggestion system and incorporate them into the main fabric of the organization. This will remove the levels of abstraction between the lowest execution levels and the highest vision level. This will in turn bring out the shortcomings at both the levels and all the other levels between. 

    The entire world works on abstraction at the highest level. People feel comfortable at the highest level of abstraction. Truth comprehended by humans is already abstracted. As it flows down the communication chain, it is further abstracted. Once it reaches the target human, the target human again adds a level of abstraction based on his capabilities/influences and will try to influence others with this level of abstraction so on and so forth. The human language is made for this level of abstraction. In fact one of the most important programming paradigm the Object Oriented Programming has abstraction at its core. This paradigm is simply the human ability and least resistance path approach to understand any aspect in the most easiest way a human can understand, which in turn leaks out a major portion of the reality. People always tell they want the "real" information, the truth. This is far from what any human wants. 

All humans want an abstracted view which will make them comfortable or un-comfortable in the most comfortable way. There are many occasions wherein a certain group of people with a certain ideology wanting to prove that their idea is the best one. To do this what is the need of killing people who are no way connected to this level of abstraction and are abstracted in a much different way. Why cant this be told in the best possible abstraction, that is human language. Why should certain unrelated people die to get your point across. Why? Tell what you want to tell straight. Keep on telling it. When somebody wants to tell a strong point, it is always better to be at the lowest level of abstraction. 

    The governments take the opposite approach. They undermine the capability of understanding of its people and present the facts at the highest level of abstraction. The amount of effort required to peel of these layers of abstraction requires huge resources. This will be done by only a few. If these are identified and re-programmed then whatever data available to the common public is the one presented to them at the highest level of abstraction which is very easy to digest. 

    The assimilation of highly abstracted and 0 level abstracted data requires the same level of effort and is the absolute minimal. Humans should never forget the art of questioning/prodding/peeling off levels of abstraction and search for the absolute truth. Ideologies requiring abstraction requiring laying down of human lives are cowardly and would require further abstractions to stay in vogue and in this race, the resultant situation would at some point go out of control leading to chaos. It is not that chaos is bad, but to reach that many lives might be lost.